Rural Heroes – Local activity at Trnovo

Introduction

This was the first day of the ‘rural heroes action’ project. The project aims to help primary schools and their pupils in mountain villages. SFERA can help by performing some maintenance tasks, entertaining the children and most importantly gathering recommendations from primary school children. The kids can speak about what they need in their neighbourhood. We will later provide these recommendations to the municipality to make sure the children’s wishes are being heard.

Setting off to Trnovo and activites

On the first day the team, consisting of local high-schoolers and SFERA employees and volunteers, gathered at the office around 9 am. Everyone helped to pack the van with little trees and plants to put in the school’s garden, paint and brushes to paint the gate, crafts materials, equipment to play games, a speaker for music and everything else that we would need to support the school. Around 10 am the SFERA team arrived in Trnovo, at a small school with approximately 8 children and unpacked the van. The primary school children were very excited to welcome their visitors and to start the activities. Then the children and the members of the SFERA team were divided into 4 teams, each with their task. One team took care of painting the fence, another team was assigned to plant the trees and flowers in the schoolyard and the 3rd team’s job was to play games with the kids. The 4th team was assigned to decorate wooden blocks to make them look like people with funny faces and decorations. The kids were so enthusiastic about the arrival of the team and all of the activities that they could not contain themselves to stick to only one team. So the kids helped a little everywhere.

Epilogue

When most of the outside activities were done the kids were moved inside the classroom to discuss what they think needs to be done to improve their lives in the mountain village. Meanwhile, the planting and painting went on outside. After hearing what all the kids had to say, these tasks outside were also completed and it was time to say goodbye. We left the teachers and children behind happily and went to the local church to eat our lunch in the yard. Then the SFERA team went back to the office to discuss the morning and to make plans for Tuesday.